Postcards Warsaw
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.

Does Anyone Send Postcards Anymore?

Electronic communications have substantially overtaken postcards.

Note: This article was originally published on Monday, April 30, 2017 at 10:44 in the evening and has been updated.


Whenever I travel and find myself in a popular point of interest or shopping area whose target market is tourists and visitors, I pass by a rack of postcards and wonder to myself: “Who actually sends postcards anymore?”

Does Anyone Send Postcards Anymore?

Postcards were still a way of letting people know that you were thinking of them while you were away from home when I first started traveling. Calling someone via telephone was still expensive; and there were not as many ways to communicate then as there are today…

…but unless you give the postcard to someone in person after your travels have been completed, sending one requires paying for a postage stamp, which may be purchased on site or could possibly require a trip to the post office to have it sent. Furthermore, the postcard usually requires between a couple of days to a full week to be delivered.

You can now use technology to instantly communicate with someone almost anywhere in the world at little or no cost, thanks to the latest in technology which continuously evolves. E-mail messages, instant messaging, social media, and text and video chat can all be employed at no charge in many cases.

In fact, one of those electronic methods of free or discounted communication will disappear on Monday, May 5, 2025 when Skype is permanently retired by Microsoft.

Moreover, photographs and videos can be sent within seconds of taking them — creating customized instant electronic postcards of sorts that can be sent to one person or groups of people. The photographs and videos can even be custom edited on the spot in minutes before sending them — and they are almost always more personal than a photograph or graphic that is on a postcard.

Final Boarding Call

Postcard Minsk
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.

One minor negative aspect of electronic communications is that the recipient does not receive a postmark, which some people consider to be similar to an official stamp in a passport.

I personally cannot remember the last time I sent a postcard, as I have instead picked up small souvenirs for intended recipients. Both methods suggest that one person is thinking of another person while traveling. For at least that reason, I would not be surprised if there are many people who still send postcards today…

…but I did not see anyone look at or touch any of the postcards in the rack shown in the photograph at the top of this article…

All photographs ©2017 by Brian Cohen.

  1. Still send postcards. Have some teenagers that love to get actual mail from the post office. That is a rarity for them since so much is digital.

  2. I still send postcards. I always send one to my grandmother, parents, and penpal. Oh and I always send one to myself as well just to see if the post actually worked! To date, the longest one was the postcard from DRC. Took 6 months to receive it back home here in NYC!

  3. If I can find postcards & postage, I do send them. Siblings that don’t travel, their families enjoy them. One of my docs gets a big kick out of receiving them and his staff enjoy seeing them from far off places.

  4. I still send postcards! My parents and other relatives still enjoy receiving them and I love picking them out and sending them!

  5. YES! I always send postcards when I travel internationally…My postcard mailing list keeps growing too! I send them to people who I don’t normally call/email, for instance my sibling’s elderly in-laws who don’t travel much.

    I consider navigating a foreign postal system very much an adventure! You can tell A LOT about a country by their local post office!

    Bonus Tip: Post offices in Australia sell international postage paid postcards for LESS than most places sell just the postcard!

  6. I know people at Postcrossing, a project that allows you to send postcards and receive postcards back from random people around the world, still mail postcards.

  7. Occasionally postcards have great art or photography on them, so I buy them and frame them. The series with photos of colorful women in Guatemala sits on my wall. People ask if I took the photos and are surprised when I turn them over to display the post card markings on the other side of the photo.

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